The Language Of Metaphysics Ancient And Modern

10.1163/ej.9789004158412.i-279.45

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Chapter Summary

This chapter presents a cautionary narrative that maps out foundational discontinuities between the ancient and modern language of metaphysics. Among the boundaries between the language of ancient and modern metaphysics is justification for "theory of knowledge" and the "foundations of knowledge. It argues that any constructivist reading of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus remains "problematic". Aristotle and Plotinus do not share the constitutive metaphysical "vocabularies" and "descriptions" of Berkeley's immaterial, Kant's transcendental, Hegel's absolute, and Husserls' phenomenological idealisms. Realism is the view (1) that there are real objects that exist independently of our knowledge, (2) that these mental and physical objects have properties and enter into relations independently of the concepts with which we understand them, or (3) the language with which we describe them. On the basis of the principle of "family resemblance" it still could be argued that ancient and modern philosophers engage in a common language of metaphysics.